sent their first cargo to New South Wales in the Sydney Cove, which had been wrecked on Preservation Island in Bass Strait in February 1797. Robert Campbell first sailed into Sydney aboard the company's ship the Hunter in 1798. Campbell was forced to sell his first consignment of goods to a syndicate of military officers in return for Paymaster's Bills drawn on London. The enterprising Campbell managed to have discussions with Governor Hunter on mercantile trading possibilities. Campbell ascertained that the Governor was seeking to break the New South Wales Corps officer's profiteering monopoly. Campbell returned to India on the Barwell in August 1798. Campbell returned to Sydney with another cargo on the Hunter in February 1800. With the governor's permission he took up residence on land bought in 1798 at Dawes Point, where he had begun to build warehouses and a private wharf. Though Campbell's request for permission to establish himself at Sydney as a resident merchant apparently was never pronounced upon by the British Government, Campbell & Co. was soon heavily involved in the Australian trade, having £50,000 worth of goods in its Sydney warehouses by 1804. In January 1805, Campbell returned to England and was involved in a famous court case in London which precipitated the breaking of the monopoly of the British East India Company. Before leaving for England Campbell had approached Philip Gidley King with a plan for to construct a ship in Sydney of 136-tons burthen, and had identified the site of the proposed shipyard in Kirribilli. His agent, John Palmer, purchased the land while Campbell was in England from Charles Grimes, the Surveyor General. The block of land included all of the Kirribilli peninsula. While Campbell was in London, he studied the building of ships and engaged a number of tradesmen and foremen to return to Sydney with him and work for him in his new shipyard. The land was cleared in his absence and timber was held in readiness at Campbell's Wharf. Campbell arrived back in the colony on the Albion in August 1806 in company with James Milson. By this time Robert Campbell was the largest private owner of cattle in the colony and one of the richest men in NSW. Campbell never occupied the land in Kirribilli. Campbell did however build Australia's first shipbuilding yards in 1807, at the site that is now the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, at the